


The Maps On Your Skin (Lead Me Astray).

by withoutwords



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Infidelity, M/M, No discernible plot, Robert POV, Second person POV, short fic, vague mentions of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 04:36:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3837322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutwords/pseuds/withoutwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t mind that he hates you, really, because it means he still feels something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Maps On Your Skin (Lead Me Astray).

**Author's Note:**

> This is the nicest thing I’ve written about Robert, but that’s probably because it’s about Aaron ;) I imagine it is set during their week at Home Farm, but it’s open to interpretation.

Aaron has a small mark below his hip bone, a lightning bolt of scar tissue. You put your thumb on it once, your mouth pressed low on his belly, and said, “That doesn’t look like,” because you always say things before thinking them through. Especially with Aaron.

“It isn’t,” Aaron had told you, little hisses, and, “Just – glass – bar fight,” which didn’t make sense at all but you didn’t feel the need to argue. The bloke could find a fight in a monastery, all things considered.

After a while you found them everywhere, little nicks and cuts, spots and stains of a life fully lived. A life separate from the sharp edge of a razor, and the bitter grasp of his own hand. Aaron fascinated you, even before you got him naked, and that _didn’t_ happen. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

*

You check up on Aaron, yes. At the start, before the sex, and later, after. You just want to know things he won’t say out loud. You want to be prepared for the things he does say. That’s all. Boys, girls, crime, justice. Life, death, change, _Jackson_.

You never checked up on Chrissie. You had nothing to lose back then.

There wasn’t much she didn’t say, anyway, and even less that you wanted to know. _You_ were fitting there, breaking off pieces and becoming something new for her. _You’re_ the one that went through the tests. You were done being tested.

Early on Aaron had said, “So, say I went out tonight, met some bloke - ” and you snapped,

“Do what you want,” with a grinding jaw and selective ear, because you didn’t want to listen, you didn’t want to know how it bothered you. The thick set of his shoulders, the meat of his thighs, the way his belly had the little paunch, making his scars looks softer somehow, lived in. It was just supposed to be a body to fuck.

“Don’t you ever,” is what you say, now, those slow little thrusts that hit deep, that make him grunt and gasp as if he’s literally losing his last breath. He looks at you, his mouth open, like he doesn’t believe you exist. “Don’t you ever,” you say again, pushing harder, slapping, bruising, like white heat in your spine. “Not like this, not with any other men.”

You fit with Chrissie, and Aaron fits with you.

No other man can have them.

*

There are soft moments, the gentle lingering touch of fingertips and the drag of his stubble across your body. He talks a lot, surprisingly, once you get him started. He has this low, gravelly murmur that settles in and out like waves. He just talks, and talks and you don’t mind, not when it’s just the two of you, not when there’s nothing else to think on.

“This one time,” you hear yourself tell him, as if the talking is infectious like the anger and the laughter and the lust. “My dad took me camping. Which was weird, you know, he – we just didn’t do things together, just me and him.”

“How old were you?”

“Uh, about seven? Eight, I think? Anyway it was the worst,” Aaron huffs a little laugh, warm against your neck, his fingers curling into your skin. “We ate cold beans and froze our bollocks off, but – but late that night he, he gave me this picture of his dad – my Grandpa – and, and he just cried.”

“Wow.”

“He asked me – he said that no matter what happened, that I’d never go away, like he did, you know? That I’d stay with my family, and work it out.”

Aaron must hear the hitch in your voice, or feel the tense line of your back; his blunt fingernails digging into your flesh. “Robert.”

“Except I left,” you go on, because you have to get it out now, and you haven’t told any one this in 20 something years. “He helped me leave. Now here I am with my family, and for what, we’re just – we’re just as dysfunctional as we ever were.”

When he kisses you it’s not leading any where, it’s just a balm, just for healing. 

“What do they say?” you murmur quietly, not wanting to look at him, not wanting to see that soft gaze like you’ve made a promise you’re not intending to keep. “Those who don’t learn from history-”

“Are doomed to repeat it,” he concedes, and he’s talking about you again, this, and you wonder if it’s always going to be that way. Moths to flames.

*

You think maybe he’s your friend. You don’t have any others, haven’t for so long you can’t count, because at some point it becomes a trade doesn’t it? A business. What two people can do for each other. 

They say not to mix money and friends, so you chose not to mix at all.

“You? _Cars_?” Aaron had cackled when he found out, a laugh so deep you didn’t recognise him. “No way, no way mate. You’re having me on.”

“Ask anyone,” you said, tipping your beer at him, and he had colour in his eyes and red in his cheeks and you were just happy. For no other reason. 

“You, dressed in … covered in … oh that’s priceless, that is.”

“I’m glad I could be a source of entertainment for you.”

“Poor baby,” he had said, and he was still making fun of you but you didn’t mind. When he came to straddle you at the place on a chair, and you hooked an arm under his arse and kissed him, you weren’t thinking you were friends.

Except maybe you are, maybe one thing is another thing is another.

*

You like his mouth. You like the pink dip of his smile or the upturn of his growl. You like the lines on his face, around his lips, and his stupid, dumb expressive eyes like he’s desperate to get caught. You think a lot of the time he probably is, the good part of him, the part of him that hates you.

You don’t mind that he hates you, really, because it means he still feels something.

“I see it, you know,” he’s telling you, holding your hands above your head, bracketing your hips with his knees. “Me and that poor cow getting drunk together, one day, chatting about Robert Sugden and how we’re well shot of him.”

“Oh, really?”

“Too right, mate. She won’t ask me why, she won’t hate me, ‘cause she’ll fuckin’ get it, won’t she?”

You let your eyes flicker over his face, the angry jut of his throat, trying to take it all in, make sense of it. “What?”

“You,” he says, no he _spits_ it, pushing your arms down harder into the mattress like maybe he can bury you both in it and stay forever. “Just … you, and the way you, the way _we_ …”

Aaron doesn’t hate you, _he can’t_ , and he wears it like a wound, like all the others.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://thisusandeveryone.tumblr.com)


End file.
